Before responding, I'd just like to say that yesterday, I believed
that I had adjusted my procmail rules so that I would never again get
any messages from or relating to this list or this WG. As far as I
am concerned, any further time of mine spent interacting with this
WG is an utter waste of my precious remaining minutes on this earth.
(I continue to be subscribed to this list only because I automagically,
using procmail, archive many many mailing list for reasons that I shall
not go into, but which have nothing at all to do with content. And
before anybody asks, no, I am _not_ an NSA contractor or employee.)
In message <20130628074459.GP2706 at Space.Net>,
Gert Doering <gert at space.net> wrote:
>> I suppose that the word "exhaustion" has a different meaning depending
>> upon one's own individual situation. Certainly, if you are one of the
>> luck few who had the foresight to start hording and to squirrel away
>> a whole lot of IPv4 space some time ago, then right now I am sure that
>> you are sitting pretty, and saying to yourself "Shortage? What shortage?"
>>>> Other people (and companis) may perhaps not have had the same level of
>> foresight.
>>No, you're misunderstanding me. Whatever we do, 4 billion IPv4 addresses
>will not be sufficient to number Internet access for 6+ billion humans
>on earth. So it's important to get over the fact that IPv4 is *gone*
>and move ahead to the only alternative we have: IPv6.
I see no reason to continue any pretense of courtesy in the presence of
such unmitigated fertilizer.
The above is the standard pro forma argument that is always trotted out
by all those who either own stock in equipment makers that are selling
IPv6 gear or who otherwise have some financial interest in persuading
everybody on earth to use something that it has already been proven that
virtually nobody actually wants or is actively using.
To say that 4 billion IPv4 addresses cannot sustain 6+ billion residents
of planet earth is essentially no different from saying that because we
have 6+ billion people we need 6+ billion toilets. In short, the
statement is ludicrous on the face of it. Such statements are deserving
of nothing other then derision and ridicule. They ignore both readily
available technology and also the obscene amounts of waste, fraud, and
abuse that are almost everywhere evident in what can only jokingly be
called the current allocation "master plan" of the IPv4 address space.
Personally, I think that anyone who even remotely identifies himself or
herself with the profession of engineering and who simultaneously denies
humanity's ability... or even willingness... to stretch something less
that 6 billion toliets to cover 6+ billion people ought to (a) hang their
heads in shame and also (b) be immediately laughed out of the business.
But we live in an odd world these days, and unfortunately neither (a) nor
(b) is currently happening.
In the meantime, until it does, and for the forseeable future, I personally
shall continue to look forward to the day... soon I hope, for all our sakes...
when the species homo sapiens finally grows up and starts understanding how
to properly care for, be good stewards of, and live within the limits of
the resources that we have, including a finite atmosphere into which we
_cannot_ actually just simply pump unlimited amounts of our effluent, a
finite land mass, a finite amount of airable land, a finite amount of fresh
clean water, and a finite IP address space.
All these resources, if managed properly, sensibly, and without profligate
waste and short-term driven exploitation, could be easily rendered
infinitely renewable, could be handed down, by us, largely if not entirely
intact, not merely to the next generation, but also to their descendants,
forever.
But homo sapiens clearly has not reached that understanding yet. He is
still out walking across that frozen land bridge from Asia into the
Americans, and all the way down to Tierra Del Fuego, perpetually in
search of new space to invade, conquer, exploit, lay waste to, and then,
as always move on. This worked great for dozens of millennia. Alas
it will not work forever.
Regards,
rfg